A Whirl Asunder by Gertrude Atherton

When the men left the dining-room they found the women in the patio, or scattered about the corridor. There was no moon, but the clear sky blazed with stars, and colored lanterns swung between the pillars or among the broad leaves of the palm-trees. The girls (the married women were little more) had thrown lace or silken scarves over their heads, and fluttered their fans idly. Clive recalled all he had read of the old time, and imagined himself back among the careless dons and doñas who lived for little but pleasure, and had not a prescience of the complex civilization to enter their Arcadia and rout its very memory.

Miss Belmont was sitting on the corridor, leaning over the low balustrade, her hands lightly clasped. She had draped a white lace mantilla about her head, and looked more Spanish than Miss West. It seemed to Clive that she had a faculty of looking whatever she wished. Someone handed her a guitar. She leaned against the pillar and tuned it absently. Clive walked over and stood staring down on her, his hands in his pockets. She sang, in a rich contralto voice, a Spanish song, whose words he could not understand, but which was the most passionate he had ever heard. Her head was thrown back. She sang frankly to Clive; her face changed with every line.